Across the River and Into the Trees: Ernest Hemingway, Boyd Gaines: 9780743566032: Amazon.com: Books Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One They started two hours before daylight, and at first, it was not necessary to break the ice across the canal as other boats had gone on ahead. In each boat, in the darkness, so you could not see, but only hear him, the poler stood in the stern, with his long oar. The shooter sat on a shooting stool fastened to the top of a box that contained his lunch and shells, and the shooter's two, or more, guns were propped against the load of wooden decoys. Somewhere, in each boat, there was a sack with one or two live mallard hens, or a hen and a drake, and in each boat there was a dog who shifted and shivered uneasily at the sound of the wings of the ducks that passed overhead in the darkness. Four of the boats went on up the main canal toward the big lagoon to the north. A fifth boat had already turned off into a side canal.

Now, the sixth boat turned south into a shallow lagoon, and there was no broken water. It was all ice, new-frozen during the sudden, windless cold of the night. It was rubbery and bending against the thrust of the boatman's oar. Then it would break as sharply as a pane of glass, but the boat made little forward progress. "Give me an oar," the shooter in the sixth boat said. He stood up and braced himself carefully. He could hear the ducks passing in the darkness, and feel the restless lurching of the dog. To the north he heard the sound of breaking ice from the other boats. "Be careful," the poler in the stern said. "Don't tip the boat over." "I am a boatman, too," the shooter said. He took the long oar the boatman handed him and reversed it so he could hold it by the blade. Holding the blade he reached forward and punched the handle through the ice.

He felt the firm bottom of the shallow lagoon, put his weight on the top of the wide oar-blade, and holding with both hands and, first pulling, then shoving, until the pole-hold was well to the stern, he drove the boat ahead to break the ice. The ice broke like sheets of plate glass as the boat drove into it, and onto it, and astern the boatman shoved them ahead into the broken passage. After a while, the shooter, who was working hard and steadily and sweating in his heavy clothes, asked the boatman, "Where is the shooting barrel?" "Off there to the left. In the middle of the next bay." "Should I turn for it now?" "As you wish." "What do you mean, as I wish? You know the water. Is there water to carry us there?" "The tide is low. Who knows?" "It will be daylight before we get there if we don't hurry." The boatman did not answer. All right, you surly jerk, the shooter thought to himself. We are going to get there.

We've made two-thirds of the way now and if you are worried about having to work to break ice to pick up birds, that is altogether too bad. "Get your back in it, jerk," he said in English. "What?" the boatman asked in Italian. "I said let's go. It's going to be light." It was daylight before they reached the oaken staved hogshead sunk in the bottom of the lagoon. It was surrounded by a sloping rim of earth that had been planted with sedge and grass, and the shooter swung carefully up onto this, feeling the frozen grasses break as he stepped on them. The boatman lifted the combination shooting stool and shell box out of the boat and handed it to the shooter, who leaned over and placed it in the bottom of the big barrel. The shooter, wearing his hip boots and an old combat jacket, with a patch on the left shoulder that no one understood, and with the slight light places on the straps, where stars had been removed, climbed down into the barrel and the boatman handed him his two guns.

He placed them against the wall of the barrel and hung his other shell bag between them, hanging it on two hooks built into the wall of the sunken barrel. Then he leaned the guns against each side of the shell bag. "Is there water?" he asked the boatman. "No water," the boatman said. "Can you drink the lagoon water?" "No. It is unhealthy." The shooter was thirsty from the hard work of breaking the ice and driving the boat in and he felt his anger rise, and then held it, and said, "Can I help you in the boat to break ice to put out the decoys?" "No," the boatman said and shoved the boat savagely out onto the thin sheet ice that cracked and ripped as the boat drove up onto it. The boatman commenced smashing at the ice with the blade of his oar and then started tossing decoys out to the side and behind him. He's in a beautiful mood, the shooter thought. He's a big brute, too. I worked like a horse coming out here. He just pulled his weight and that's all. What the hell is eating him? This is his trade isn't it?

He arranged the shooting stool so he would have the maximum swing to left and right, opened a box of shells, and filled his pockets and opened another of the boxes of shells in the shell bag so he could reach into it easily. In front of him, where the lagoon lay glazed in the first light, was the black boat and the tall, heavily built boatman smashing with his oar at the ice and tossing decoys overboard as though he were ridding himself of something obscene. It was getting lighter now and the shooter could see the low line of the near point across the lagoon. Beyond that point he knew there were two other shooting posts and far beyond it there was more marsh and then the open sea. He loaded both his guns and checked the position of the boat that was putting out decoys. From behind him, he heard the incoming whisper of wings and he crouched, took hold of his right hand gun with his right hand as he looked up from under the rim of the barrel, then stood to shoot at the two ducks that were dropping down, their wings set to brake, coming down dark in the gray dim sky, slanting toward the decoys.

His head low, he swung the gun on a long slant, down, well and ahead of the second duck, then without looking at the result of his shot he raised the gun smoothly, up, up ahead and to the left of the other duck that was climbing to the left and as he pulled, saw it fold in flight and drop among the decoys in the broken ice. He looked to his right and saw the first duck a black patch on the same ice. He knew he had shot carefully on the first duck, far to the right of where the boat was, and on the second, high out and to the left, letting the duck climb far up and to the left to be sure the boat was out of any line of fire. It was a lovely double, shot exactly as he should have shot, with complete consideration and respect for the position of the boat, and he felt very good as he reloaded. "Listen," the man in the boat called. "Don't shoot toward the boat." I'll be a sad son of a bitch, the shooter said to himself. I will indeed. "Get your decoys out," he called to the man in the boat. "But get them out fast.

I won't shoot until they are all out. Except straight overhead." The man in the boat said nothing that could be heard. I can't figure it, the shooter thought to himself. He knows the game. He knows I split the work, or more, coming out. I never shot a safer or more careful duck in my life than that. What's the matter with him? I offered to put the dekes out with him. The hell with him. Out on the right now, the boatman was still chopping angrily at the ice, and tossing out the wooden decoys in a hatred that showed in every move he made. Don't let him spoil it, the shooter told himself. There won't be much shooting with this ice unless the sun should melt it later on. You probably will only have a few birds, so don't let him spoil it for you. You don't know how many more times you will shoot ducks and do not let anything spoil it for you. He watched the sky lightening beyond the long point of marsh, and turning in the sunken barrel, he looked out across the frozen lagoon, and the marsh, and saw the snow-covered mountains a long way off.

Low as he was, no foothills showed, and the mountains rose abruptly from the plain. As he looked toward the mountains he could feel a breeze on his face and he knew, then, the wind would come from there, rising with the sun, and that some birds would surely come flying in from the sea when the wind disturbed them. The boatman had finished putting out the decoys. They were in two bunches, one straight ahead and to the left toward where the sun would rise, and the other to the shooter's right. Now he dropped over the hen mallard with her string and anchor, and the calling duck bobbed her head under water, and raising and dipping her head, splashed water onto her back. "Don't you think it would be good to break more ice around the edges?" the shooter called to the boatman. "There's not much water to attract them." The boatman said nothing but commenced to smash at the jagged perimeter of ice with his oar. This ice breaking was unnecessary and the boatman knew it. But the shooter did not know it and he thought, I do not understand him but I must not let him ruin it. I must keep it entire and not let him do it.

Every time you shoot now can be the last shoot and no stupid son of a bitch should be allowed to ruin it. Keep your temper, boy, he told himself. Copyright &copy; 1950 by Ernest Hemmingway Copyright renewed &copy; 1978 by Mary Hemmingway --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Across the river and into the trees - Ernest Hemingway - Google Books Across the river and into the trees 6 Reviews In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway made his first extended visit to Italy in thirty years. His reacquaintance with Venice, a city he loved, provided the inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees, the story of Richard Cantwell, a war-ravaged American colonel stationed in Italy at the close of the Second World War, and his love for a young Italian countess.

A poignant, bittersweet homage to love that overpowers reason, to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the worldweary beauty and majesty of Venice, Across the River and into the Trees stands as Hemingway's statement of defiance in response to the great dehumanizing atrocities of the Second World War.

Hemingway's last full-length novel published in his lifetime, it moved John O'Hara in The New York Times Book Review to call him "the most important author since Shakespeare." From inside the book What people are saying - Write a review User ratings View all » Common terms and phrases ahead aircraft Andy army asked bait beach beautiful big fish boat bomb bottle bull fight Burma Road Chiang Kai-shek China Chinese Colonel coming correspondent coxswain crash dead drink elephant Ernest Hemingway face fire flying Fox Green French front Generalissimo German glasses guerrilla Gulf Stream head hear Hemingway hill hook horse hunting Japan Japanese jump killed knew lion looked machine guns Madrid marlin miles military Miss Mary morning move Nairobi never night obituaries Paris planes pounds pulled Rambouillet remember reporter river road Roy Marsh Russian shell shoot shot shouted side smoke started story stream street striped marlin talking tanks Teruel thing told Toronto Daily Star Toronto Star Tortosa town trees troops trout Wakamba walk watched wounded write yards About the author (1967) Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in the family home in Oak Park, Ill., on July 21, 1899.

In high school, Hemingway enjoyed working on The Trapeze, his school newspaper, where he wrote his first articles. Upon graduation in the spring of 1917, Hemingway took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. After a short stint in the U.S. Army as a volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy, Hemingway moved to Paris, and it was here that Hemingway began his well-documented career as a novelist. Hemingway's first collection of short stories and vignettes, entitled In Our Time, was published in 1925. His first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, the story of American and English expatriates in Paris and on excursion to Pamplona, immediately established him as one of the great prose stylists and preeminent writers of his time. In this book, Hemingway quotes Gertrude Stein, "You are all a lost generation," thereby labeling himself and other expatriate writers, including Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and Ford Madox Ford.

Other novels written by Hemingway include: A Farewell To Arms, the story, based in part on Hemingway's life, of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse; For Whom the Bell Tolls, the story of an American who fought, loved, and died with the guerrillas in the mountains of Spain; and To Have and Have Not, about an honest man forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West. Non-fiction includes Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in East Africa; and A Moveable Feast, his recollections of Paris in the Roaring 20s. In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novella, The Old Man and the Sea. A year after being hospitalized for uncontrolled high blood pressure, liver disease, diabetes, and depression, Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.

Bibliographic information Across The River And Into The Trees - Ernest Hemingway - Google Books Across The River And Into The Trees 11 Reviews On the last day of his life Colonel Richard Cantwell sits in a duck blind in Trieste, reflecting on his life as a soldier and reminiscing about his tryst with a young Venetian woman named Renata. Across the River and into the Trees is the moving account of one man’s thoughts as he nears the end of his life, pondering a love that is stronger than reason and the beauty of Venice. Originally serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine from February to June 1950, Across the River and into the Trees takes its title from the last words uttered by Confederate General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson. Panned by critics on its publication, it is now recognized as an important part of the Hemingway canon for its depiction of how man deals with death. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

What people are saying - Write a review User ratings LibraryThing Review User Review - fuzzy_patters - LibraryThing This is a good book, but it isn't great by Hemingway standards. Hemingway's greatest strengths lie in writing honestly and in portraying tragedies. The writing here is very open and honest, but the ... Read full review LibraryThing Review User Review - Cheryl_in_CC_NV - LibraryThing I didn't understand any of the situation or the allusions. I didn't sympathize with the characters. I didn't understand the point of the story. Sorry.

Read full review View all » Common terms and phrases Alvarito Andrea anyway attack bartender beautiful Benny Meyers better big ducks bitch boat boatman can’t CHAPTER Cipriani cold Colonel asked Colonel thought Colonel told command concierge Condottieri d’Annunzio damn dark Daughter dead decoys drink ducks Ettore face feel fight fought give glass goddamn gondola Good-bye Gran Maestro Grand Canal Grappa Gritti hair hand hard Harry’s head hell Honorable Pacciardi I’ve isn’t Jackson killed kissed knew Krauts Let’s light live looked morning move never nice night pocket portrait remember Renata river road rough SHAEF shoot shooter shot sleep smiled soldier sorry sure talk tell Thank There’s things Torcello town trade trees Trieste true truly turned Valpolicella Veneto Venice walk Walter Bedell Smith We’ll What’s wind wish wonderful wouldn’t You’re About the author (2012) Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the twentieth century's most important novelists, as well as a brilliant short story writer and foreign correspondent. His body of work includes the novels A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, and in 1954 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Author's Name Is Hemingway The Author's Name Is Hemingway By JOHN O'HARA ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES By Ernest Hemingway. he most important author living today, the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare, has brought out a new novel. The title of the novel is "Across the River and Into the Trees." The author, of course, is Ernest Hemingway, the most important, the outstanding author out of the millions of writers who have lived since 1616. Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Ill, U. S. A., on July 21, 1898. That makes him an American whose age is 52. His father was a physician named Clarence Edmonds Hemingway; his mother's maiden name was Grace Hall. Hemingway went to Oak Park High and not to college. He got into the newspaper business, went to France as a Red Cross ambulance driver when he was 19 years old and a year later was badly shot up in Italy.

After World War I he spent most of his time in Europe, with visits to the United States and Africa for hunting, fishing, and seeing friends and acquaintances. He anticipated World War II, and took part in the actions in Spain. In 1944 he participated in the invasion of the European continent. (He was anti-Fascist in the Spanish hostilities and anti-Hitler in the subsequent activities. It may seem that these things should go without saying, but nowadays nothing goes without saying.

These comments are meant to be straightforward, but there must be no lingering doubt.) Between War One and War Two Ernest Hemingway produced the following books: "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923); "In Our Time" (1924); "The Torrents of Spring" (1926); "The Sun Also Rises" (1926); "Men Without Women" (1927); "A Farewell to Arms" (1929); Death in the Afternoon" (1932); "Winner Take Nothing" (1933); "The Green Hills of Africa" (1935); "To Have and Have Not" (1937); "The Fifth Column" (1938); "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940). Books do not necessarily represent an author's activity, but the new novel is Hemingway's thirteenth book in what appears to be twenty-seven years of writing and knocking around, for a rough average of one book every two years. Hemingway has not been idle, and most of the items in his bibliography come alive by merely calling up their titles.

The reasons that Ernest Hemingway is important are not easy to search for, although they are easy to find. Once you have skipped the remarks of the pedants, the college professors, the litterateurs, and of Hemingway himself, and have examined his background and his still immediate history, you can relax down to the fine, simple, inexplicable acceptance of being in the world-presence of a genius. The college professors (No can do; can teach pretty good) are ready out of their chunky erudition to prove that Ernest Hemingway got that way because he had a sister whose middle name was Xerxes. Or they, the pundits, may have got by hearsay a remote rumor that one day in Montreal a man who looked very much like Ernest Hemingway was seen to have in the left hand pocket of his tweed jacket a small volume not too dissimilar from an Anabasis. The chances are that Ernest Hemingway in the formative years didn't read much but Ring Lardner's sport stories in the Chicago papers, Caesar's Gallic Wars and the literature that any high school boy skips over. Over or through.

He was a big kid with not very good eyesight, with enormous, ill-controlled strength of muscle, and apparently, an enviable admiration for an enviable father. Ernest went to the rehearsal war, and, after it, got some rude experience in cablese, a frustrating discipline that almost lost us all an artist. There was, it must be remembered, a phase during which Hemingway could have been found guilty of poetry of a sort. Miss Gertrude Stein, who was as inevitable as the Albany night boat, did Hemingway no harm. She was living in Paris, France, and she was a good influence. I have a theory, which I have offered before, that all you need to know about the influence of Miss Stein on the young Ernest Hemingway is to pretend that you are, say, a Chinese who never has read English; you look at some pages of the "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," then look at the superb Caporetto retreat writing in "A Farewell to Arms." You will think they were written by the same person.

In the new novel (as in some earlier ones) the big block paragraph is not employed by the artist as it was in "A Farewell to Arms." I have not been able to find a paragraph longer than fourteen uninterrupted slugs of type. Whatever influence Gertrude Stein had on Hemingway has been accepted, studied, utilized and rejected. Ernest Hemingway is and really always was, his own man. We now can forget about Gertrude Stein. Thank you very much, and so long. The outsize boy, the doctor's son, the brittle bones, the halting speech (completely different from that of Dr. Maugham), the defective eyesight--they all had and have their part in the mental and physical makeup of a great author. But who has not known a stammering, gangling gawk of a doctor's embarrassment who couldn't go past M in the alphabet? Ernest Hemingway, the sternly self-edited artist, had young people in the Nineteen Thirties marrying on no more than "We'll have a fine life." Why? Because Ernest Hemingway, the artist, had put just those words in his lines of type at just the right time.

The truculent, self-pitying hero of "Across the River and Into the Trees" is a busted one- star general called Col. Richard Cantwell. He seems to have traversed the same territory as the charming Lieutenant Henry of "A Farewell to Arms." It is impossible to believe that the lieutenant and the colonel are the same man, and therefore the autobiographical aspect must be ruled out one time or the other. The present reviewer, whose age is 45, is unwilling to concede that Enrico and Ricardo are the same infant with years piled on. In any event, Colonel Cantwell is in Venice to see his girl, a beautiful and quite incredible countess named Renata. The colonel is full of junk, against the bad heart condition he has, and the story is hardly more than a report of their last love-making, to the accompaniment of a threnody on and by the dying warrior. That great, great man and fine actor, Walter Huston, was in my mind all the time I read this book. Huston, singing "September Song," you know.

But Hemingway, the inimitable, has written a 308-page novel out of a "September Song" situation, and not one syllable of what Hemingway has written can or will be missed by any literate person in the world. Before you ever see the girl, the countess, you are taken through some duck-shooting that makes you want to let go at a boatman with both barrels. At the same time you somehow are rooting for a second duck. The colonel is understandably angry with the inefficient boatman; he also is rather swaggeringly proud of getting two ducks. I, myself, a rifle man, wanted to kill the colonel while he was in the barrel that you shot ducks from, but that certainly is nothing against Hemingway's writing. He probably meant it that way. The novel opens with the colonel on his way to his ultimate rendezvous with the countess. Cantwell, the colonel, is pulling rank on the rather nice little T-5 who is driving the colonel's Cadillac. The little fellow is somebody named Jackson, from the state of Wyoming.

My own personal experience with Wyoming characters has been that Jackson would have twirled the colonel out of the automobile and reported him dead. The colonel insists upon giving Jackson, a non-commissioned officer, a Michelin- Baedeker course in how to appreciate Venice, Italy. The course goes back quite a few years, several centuries, in fact. It not only had to do with the colonel's serving in the Italian Army in War One, but 'way, 'way before. Jackson, who seemed to the present reviewer to be one of those Wyoming skinny boys whose father might have been a pal of Senator Cary's, should have stopped the Cadillac and said, "Colonel, you got any prayers, you say them, because you bore me." Then, to be sure, we'd have had no novel. Or not the same novel. After the patronizing travelog, the non-com and Colonel Cantwell get to Venice, and the colonel has the rendezvous with his girl, the countess. She is, on this reviewer's oath, practically all that a middle-aged man with a cardiac condition could ask for.

Not yet 19 years old, a countess who need not worry about consequences, Renata (whose name sounds like lasso to me) is so much in love with the colonel that she takes his rudeness and gives him emeralds in return. It is so easy to kid that aspect of Hemingway's writing and it is so foolish to do so. Go ahead and disbelieve in Catherine Barkley, as I disbelieve now in the Countess Renata, as I did too in Maria, of "For Whom the Bell Tolls." But the Hemingway heroines, as distinguished from the Sinclair Lewis ones, have a way of catching up with you after you have passed them by. You read them; you see them played by Helen Hayes, Elissa Landi, Ingrid Bergman; you put them away. And yet in later years you form your own non-theatrical picture of them out of what you remember of what Hemingway wrote, and what you have seen of living women.

If Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner should play Renata it will be easy to understand why either actress was cast, but it will probably only postpone a personal picture of the heroine of "Across the River and Into the Trees." There are not many real things about Renata; in fact, she has so few individual characteristics and attributes that after the inevitable movie has been made, it may be much easier to form your own idea--and almost entirely your own--of what Renata was intended to be. It is not unfair or unjustifiable, this casting of the novel's characters. The novel was written as a serial for Cosmopolitan, whose demands and restrictions are I should say, almost precisely those of the movies. Now that the novel is available between boards, a great many touches that most likely were in Hemingway's working manuscript have been restored. They don't add much, they don't take much away. At the same time they do make a difference: they make the bound volume authentically Hemingway, and not Hemingway plus (or maybe minus is the word) the Cosmopolitan editors. And in any case the touches never would appear in the movies.

They would not even appear in the most rudimentary "treatment" that might be submitted to the Johnston Office. The reasons Hemingway is important are not easy to search for, but they are easy to find. They are hard to search for, because he is so competent and deceivingly simple and plain. It is not enough to say that simplicity itself is rare. People are always mailing authors their 9-year-old children's compositions as examples of beautiful simplicity. Simplicity is not rare. And fancy, complicated writing isn't rare either. Every author gets fancy writing in the form of letters and manuscripts from jailbirds, psychopaths and students. But what Hemingway has--and Steinbeck has it too--is pre-paper discipline. It means, first of all, point of view. A great many non-writers have it without having to reveal it; but with an author it is not only revealing; it often is exposing. A possibly oversimplified definition of point of view would be "feeling and preference" and, in an author's case, the expression of an attitude.

It is in the manner and method of the expression of the attitude that writers vary, and before that, the pre-paper discipline--the thinking, the self-editing-- gets its test. An author may seem to lead a ruggedly simple life, but the fact that he is an author makes him not a simple individual. The personality therefore requires enormous discipline in putting the uncomplicated thinking down on paper. The ostensibly simple lives led by men like Hemingway and Steinbeck tell practically nothing about the personalities, although the writing is simple too. The ostensibly simple life led by William Faulkner tells nothing about him either, for the writing comes out plain but complicated, with so little change in the process between first thought and final printed page that Faulkner, while a genius, may not be an artist. It makes damn small difference to him or to me. It shouldn't to Hemingway, although it may, because he permits himself practically no private life, or at any rate gets none. The most recent, and most disgusting, example of the intrusions into Hemingway's private life was made by a publication that report on Hemingway's drinking habits, somewhat in the manner of a gleeful parole officer.

It also included some direct quotes, in tin-ear fashion, of what were passed off as Hemingway's speech, but sounded more like the dialogue written for the Indian chief in "Annie Get Your Gun." The inability to write the way people talk is a common affliction among writers. But for Eustace Tilley to raise an eyeglass over anybody's drinking is one for the go-climb-a- lamppost department. The magazine had printed numerous little attacks on Hemingway by a semi-anonymous staffman who has gone to his heavenly reward, just as it printed attacks on Faulkner by a critic who has returned to his proper chore on the radio. With the long piece on Hemingway the magazine achieved a new low in something. In the new novel, Hemingway, rather regrettably, has done nothing to protect himself against personal attack, or, more accurately, counter-attack. He has named some names, and made easily identifiable some others: Patton, Eisenhower, Montgomery, Ney, Custer, Truman, Dewey, as well as an author or two, a journalist or two, and probably a few non- celebrated individuals who will recognize themselves or think they do.

This does not sound like a roman � clef, any more than it is an autobiography (Hemingway is still alive, and Dick Cantwell ends the book by dying), and that doesn't matter either way. What matters is that Ernest Hemingway has brought out a new book. To use his own favorite metaphor, he may not be able to go the full distance, but he can still hurt you. Always dangerous. Always in there with that right cocked. Real class. Across the River and Into the Trees | Imagining Venice Across the River and Into the Trees by Amber Rocha • April 21, 2013 • Student Book Report • 1 Comment Venice is known as many things. Some say it is a militant city. Some say it is decadent. Some say it is dying. In Across the River and Into the Trees, the city of Venice is a symbol for immortality, which is something Colonel Cantwell, the book’s main character, searches for throughout the entire novel. The story is him trying to overcome a need for security and safety and coming to terms with his imminent death. Across the River and Into the Trees was written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1950.

The novel was written in Italy, Cuba, and France and seems to coincide with some of Hemingway’s real life experiences. Colonel Richard Cantwell is the book’s main protagonist who bears a lot of similarities to Hemingway himself. Renata is the eighteen year old Venetian Countess whom Richard falls in love with. Jackson is Richard’s military driver who drives him from Trieste to Venice throughout the story. Also, the Gran Maestro is the head waiter at the Gritti Palace Hotel and an old friend of the Colonel’s. In the novel, Colonel Richard Cantwell has returned to Italy and is being driven to Venice by Jackson, the driver. In the Colonel’s youth, he had fought in Italy during World War II and he was returning to the place he fought for but had never visited. He is sick and knows he will die soon. He arrives in Venice and meets with an old friend, whom he calls Gran Maestro. They are both apart of a brotherhood, which they invented in honor of Brusadelli. After this, he meets up with Renata, an eighteen year old countess. They have dinner and discuss and imagine eventually getting married and starting a family.

Eventually, they both realize that he will die soon and instead, she decides to call him father and he his daughter. After that, they still make love and then part ways. Richard then gets lost around the city, relating to him fighting for Venice as a boy without ever actually seeing the city. He is attempting to use intuition alone to return to the state of simper faith and confidence he had as a young man. Two former fascists start following him around the city and harassing him. This event reassures him that he no longer has any faith in his identity as a military man. Richard and Renata see each other again and he tells her he wants her. He does not want to want her because he does not want to hurt her, since he will die soon, but he cannot help it. He seems to identify Renata with life and battle with death so he tells Renata that he does not dream of her, but of battles. He does this to attempt to soften the blow for when he actually dies. They do go on to make plans of them living in America in the future and traveling throughout the country. After this, say their final goodbyes.

Eventually, Richard decides he is no more of the US army and that he has said goodbye to the woman he loves. Richard proceeds to express simple acceptance and dismissal of his past, instead of the usual mixed pride and hatred. As he leaves the duck shoot scene, he finally passes away from a series of heart attacks, at peace with the military life he had led. As the story takes place in Venice, nothing is affected by that plot physically. The myth of Venice the lewd and Venice the libertine do come out in some of the undertones of the love story between Richard and Renata. He is an older man and she is an eighteen year old Countess. Only in a place as libertine as Venice is made out to be would you see this kind of relationship be flaunted around. Also, in a chapter, Richard and Renata make love in a gondola. Public sexual encounters are highly frowned upon everywhere else but in Venice, this seems almost expected to happen. The myth of Venice the lewd definitely comes into play with that. If this story had not been set in Venice, I do not believe the relationship and what it consisted of would have been featured in the story.

I do believe the time Ernest Hemingway spent in Venice helped shaped Renata’s character as a true Ventian woman. She would do anything to be with the one she loved but she also was not willing to be dumb and in love and risk all she had. The writing of the story was definitely effective in getting the novel’s point across. Colonel Richard’s search for immortality and finally coming to terms with the loss of his youth and his death was expertly shown by Hemingway. The time he spends in Venice, finally exploring the city he fought for and lost his youth for helps him come to term with his death. He is able to spend some last moments with his love and that helps him as well. Venice is very present in this novel as just being where this man’s entire life started and ended. Fighting for Venice shaped the Colonel’s whole life and made his life turn out exactly as it did.

Project MUSE - Reading Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees Reading Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees Glossary and Commentary Mark Cirino Publication Year: 2015 In 1950, Ernest Hemingway was the most famous writer in the world, and he faced intense expectations for a masterwork to follow up his epic For Whom the Bell Tolls, published a decade earlier. The novel that emerged, Across the River and into the Trees, was a chronicle of the final days of the cantankerous American colonel Richard Cantwell, who spends his weekend leave in Venice hunting ducks, enjoying the city, and spending time with his beloved teen­ aged Italian contessa, Renata. This work elicited everything from full­throated praise to howls of derision and outrage. Sixtyfive years later, it has been consigned to the margins of Hemingway’s legendary career. Through this exhaustive reading of Across the River and into the Trees, Mark Cirino shows that we cannot disparage what we do not understand.

With this novel, Heming­ way is at his most allusive and opaque, and Cirino unpacks Hemingway’s vaunted iceberg theory, in which the majority of a text’s substance remains submerged, unspoken, and invisible. Hemingway makes constant references to his own life, friends, and families; other artistic works; the history, politics, and culture of Venice and America; and he draws from his more celebrated works of fiction. Cirino traces the complex web that left many of the novel’s readers confused. In Across the River and into the Trees, the classic Hemingway themes emerge: the soldier after the war and the function of love amid the bloody twentieth century. We learn about the conflicting roles of the soldier and the artist in society and the way a man can struggle to be human and humane to those around him. Reading Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees is the premier work devoted to the novel.

Although Hemingway’s book has been relegated to the corners of twentieth­century literature, Cirino’s exegesis offers a new perspective on the work, at once reintroducing the novel to aficionados, introducing it to new readers, and deepening our understanding of Hemingway’s more famous works. Download PDF pp. ix-x i would like to thank generous, patient, and candid readers of previous versions of this book: mark P. Ott, Kirk Curnutt, Rosella mamoli Zorzi, and John Paul Russo. i thank all of them for their many suggestions, and for sharing their expertise. Thanks to the many supportive friends in the Hemingway Society, particularly... An Introduction to Across the River and into the Trees Download PDF pp. xi-xviii although he is reflexively included among the greatest of all american novelists, ernest Hemingway published only five full-length novels in his lifetime.¹ His career as a novelist spanned only from 1926 to 1950, from ages twenty-seven to fifty-one. Three are masterpieces: The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and...

Abbreviations for the Works of Ernest Hemingway Used in this Book Download PDF pp. xxi-2 all page references in this volume are keyed to the First Scribner Paperback Fiction edition of Across the River and into the Trees (1996), which begins on page 11 and ends on page 283. annotations are given a page and line number, separated by a colon. a reference to the third line of page 17, for instance, would be 17:3. a reference to the first three... Front Matter Download PDF pp. 3-4 Title: The title for Across the River and into the Trees is explained in its last chapter, when Colonel Richard Cantwell tells his driver (also named Jackson) of Stonewall Jackson’s last words: “let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees” (282:4–6). at the same point in the manuscript, Hemingway wrote a note... Chapter 1 Download PDF pp. 5-10 11:1 They started two hours before daylight: The novel begins before dawn on Sunday in the winter of 1948–49 in the Veneto.

“They” refers to the hunting party in the six boats, which includes the “shooter,” who is the protagonist, Colonel Richard Cantwell and the “poler,” a surly boatman. it is fitting that the first sentence of... Chapter 2 Download PDF pp. 11-15 17:1 But he was not a boy: in a novel where aging and dying and the memory of youth are central to the plot, the word “boy” is conspicuous and recurrent. in addition to addressing himself or referring to himself as a “boy” over a dozen times, part of the challenge is to be a “good boy” (154:9). Cantwell at one point is at a loss... Chapter 3 Download PDF pp. 16-25 21:1 That was day before yesterday: in what is possibly the most confusing sentence in the novel, “That” refers to Cantwell’s appointment with his doctor, which takes place on Thursday. The drive south from Trieste to Venice takes place on Friday. He meets Renata on Friday, sees her again and says goodbye to her on Saturday... Chapter 4 Download PDF pp.

26-36 28:1 Now: The flashback from a few weeks previously that ended chapter 3 is over and Hemingway is explicit about putting the action back to the trip into Venice, which takes place on Friday. Unlike an author like Joyce, Faulkner, or Virginia woolf, when Hemingway manipulates time, he usually guides the reader. See “The Snows of Kilimanjaro... Chapter 5 Download PDF pp. 37-42 37:1 But he continued to look: Just as chapters 2 and 3 begin by responding to the conclusion of the previous chapter (17:1), the opening of chapter 5 refutes Cantwell’s “Let’s roll” command (36:32). 37:2 when he was eighteen years old: Cantwell is referring to the Battle of the Piave, which took place on 15–23 June 1918, when Hemingway, like Cantwell, was... Chapter 6 Download PDF pp.

43-58 43:2 post-war rich from Milan: another consistent theme in Hemingway’s work is his disdain for those who profit from war, the so-called pescecani (43:16, 48:6, 103:14, 188:10, 188:15), whom he despises. One of the central tenets of the Order to which Cantwell belongs is “a true, good hatred of all those who profited by war”... Chapter 7 Download PDF pp. 59-70 57:2–3 not the accurate term: Cantwell reveres the bar to the extent that he believes “lobby” does not convey its majesty. Language falls short. The theme of accuracy, precision, propriety, correctness, and efficiency continues to emerge. Cantwell has a compulsive fixation on accuracy, precision in description, comportment, payment... Chapter 8 Download PDF pp. 71-77 68:4–5 Naturally, since it had been a palace: Cantwell’s room is at the Gritti Palace. See entry at 46:30.

68:7–8 found the walk long, although it was a very short one: The omniscient narrator offers another indication of Cantwell’s failing health. Let us recall, however, that Cantwell has just consumed more than seven drinks, which may or may... Chapter 9 Download PDF pp. 78-99 76:1 Colonel Cantwell: The protagonist is only referred to as “Colonel Cantwell” three times in the novel: here, in identifying himself on the phone to ettore (75:11), and on the phone again to Renata (182:9). 76:2 the last sunlight of that day: Chapter 9, then, opens at dusk on Friday. 76:9–10 the paved street which turned off on the right: The street that turns off on... Chapter 10 Download PDF pp. 100-102 98:1–2 the right side of the street that led to the Gritti: Renata and the Colonel are walking on Calle Larga XXii marzo, which becomes Calle delle Ostreghe.

The walk from Harry’s Bar to the Gritti should take less than ten minutes, even for a man with a bad heart who is laying more than a dozen drinks. The street XXii marzo, or... Chapter 11 Download PDF pp. 103-108 102:1–3 They came in . . . : note the Hemingwayesque accumulation of prepositions: “came in” (l. 1); “out of the wind and cold” (l. 1); “through the main entrance” (ll. 1–2); “into the light and warmth” (ll. 2–3). Just as the novel’s title will depend on the power of prepositional phrases, the reader must appreciate that Renata and Cantwell... Chapter 12 Download PDF pp. 109-128 110:2 both his flanks covered: Just as the bathroom in the Gritti is evaluated for its military soundness (107:2–3), Cantwell’s instinct is to feel vulnerable if not protected, even in civilian life. See entry at 96:7–8.

110:16 Georgie Patton: Cantwell’s mocking name for george Smith Patton Jr. (1885–1945), the notorious world war ii general... Chapter 13 Download PDF pp. 129-132 140:4–5 as lovely as a good horse or as a racing shell: These two similes have resonance in Hemingway’s work. in The Sun Also Rises, the curves of Brett ashley’s body are likened to those of “the hull of a racing yacht” (30). Cantwell believes that Renata will “hold the pace and stay the course” (226:9–10), a horse-racing metaphor... Chapter 14 Download PDF pp. 133-134 148:1 Please don’t be bad: Renata begins chapter 14 with a salvo of requests—albeit polite—to Cantwell about his behavior: “Please don’t be bad . . . Please don’t pretend to be stupid . . . please let’s not think of anything . . .

Please be good and kind” (148:1, 148:9, 148:9–10, 148:14). after their torrid lovemaking, Renata is careful to... Chapter 15 Download PDF pp. 135-135 154:6–7 I’m not going to talk to a picture: Cantwell’s incessant interior monologue becomes a spoken one, as he directs his thoughts and emotions toward this portrait. it would be a misreading of this quirk of Cantwell to refer back to Jackson’s opinion of him as “slug-nutty” (34:33); he is simply using this portrait as a prop... Chapter 16 Download PDF pp. 136-138 The action of chapter 16 is consumed by Cantwell waking up and going to the bathroom and thinking.

In this bathroom monologue, his consciousness is reported by “he thought” (156:6); “he thought” (156:12); “he thought” (156:18); “he thought” (157:1); “he said to himself ” (157:3); “he thought” (157:6); “he considered” (157:7–8)... Chapter 17 Download PDF pp. 139-142 159:1 When it started to be light: Chapter 16 begins “before daylight” (156:1), and as chapter 17 begins, we are beginning the day. we have “first and best light” (160:19) and then “good, or almost good” light (162:6). 159:3–4 read and sign the forms he did not believe in: yet another example of the disconnect between Cantwell and... Chapter 18 Download PDF pp.

143-144 163:1 Gazzettino: The local paper, Il Gazzettino, has various editions, depending on the town. in the manuscript, Hemingway wrote “the gazzettino de Veneto” (JFK 1), along with a note to check the spelling. although there has never been any such publication, Cantwell presumably would be receiving Il Gazzettino di Venezia, the... Chapter 19 Download PDF pp. 145-146 166:1–3 with the leisure of a fighter: Since a fallen fighter is given ten seconds before he is counted out, Hemingway’s hypothetical fighter would have come to, heard the referee count “four,” and then known that he had five more seconds before being counted out. Particularly at this phase of Hemingway’s life, metaphorical... Chapter 20 Download PDF pp. 147-148 169:8 the trouble,” and he: it appears that a speech tag is missing; either the dialogue should be attributed, or this sequence should be divided into two sentences.

169:16–17 for he was lonely too: The night porter replaces Portrait and Cantwell as the audience and interlocutor. This quality recalls the 1933 short story “a Clean... Chapter 21 Download PDF pp. 149-152 172:2 the usual dirty note: Ten centesimi only came in the form of a note around the time of world war i and has since been produced as a coin. it would be unlikely that Cantwell would be carrying an antiquated bill for such a small sum of money, about two american cents. 172:2–3 the crowd of those condemned: Hemingway... Chapter 22 Download PDF pp. 153-155 177:1 He loved the market: Venice’s Rialto market, located at the center of the city, has lasted centuries. excellent photographs of Hemingway’s visit to the market are in moriani (98–100). These three pictures depict Hemingway with a notepad, jotting down details about the fish market and interviewing a fishmonger. This effusive... Chapter 23 Download PDF pp.

156-158 181:1 Hotel Gritti-Palace: This establishment does not hyphenate its last two words, as here, which is the only such error in the novel. Otherwise, when it is not referred to as simply the Gritti, the hotel is referred to as the Gritti Palace Hotel (76:1–2, 102:2, 202:27–28), the Gritti Hotel (60:29), or the Hotel Gritti (282:31)... Chapter 24 pp. 159-159 185:4 Are you all right? Renata can evidently see the physical manifestation of his ailing heart. 185:10 For nothing: Hemingway is transposing Cantwell’s italian response, which is “per niente” or, as Pivano translates it, “di niente” (153). See Cirino, “you don’t Know” (45–46). 185:16–17 and pondered that for two seconds: Cantwell, who values quick decisions...

Chapter 25 Download PDF pp. 160-160 188:1–3 At the Gritti: This chapter begins in classic Hemingway fashion, with an accumulation of four prepositional phrases in one sentence. 189:14 fabricar rognons: according to Craig Boreth’s Hemingway Cookbook, they are eating Rognons grilled with Champignons, consisting of veal kidneys, mushrooms... Chapter 26 Download PDF pp. 161-162 at the beginning of chapter 26 in the manuscript, Hemingway writes: “Found my typewriter ribbon fucked up and jammed at 0520. why can’t people find their own god-damned air-plane?” 190:1 at the table: The first sentences of chapters 24, 25, and 26 each establish a table at the Gritti: Renata is waiting at the table... Chapter 27 Download PDF pp. 163-166 193:17–194:7 Hemingway unintentionally leaves an ambiguity in dialogue attribution.

Renata begins the dialogue by asking if Cantwell closes the windows. after a brief response, it seems that Cantwell asks, “How much alike are we?” (193:20). Renata observes that they haven’t had an opportunity to find out. Then, it is unclear... Chapter 28 Download PDF pp. 167-168 199:11 I’m sorry about things: “Things” must mean that she is sorry that Cantwell is dying and that they are not able to have traditional sex. She might also be apologizing about alvarito’s presence in their lives and his inevitable role as Cantwell’s replacement. This iteration picks up Renata being “so ashamed” (194:19)... Chapter 29 Download PDF pp. 169-173 203:1 Just as the first sentences of chapters 24, 25, and 26 establish the characters at a table in the Gritti (see entry at 190:1), chapters 28, 29, and 30 all begin by locating Cantwell and Renata on the bed in the Gritti Palace Hotel.

The first sentence of each chapter is “They lay together now and did not speak and the Colonel felt her... Chapter 30 Download PDF pp. 174-178 211:1 lay quietly on the bed: Chapter 30 is the third consecutive chapter that establishes Renata and Colonel Cantwell in bed. The declaration that “it was too late” (211:4–5) marks another progression in Cantwell’s knowledge of his own mortality. 211:6 Othello and Desdemona: although this is the novel’s only explicit mention of... Chapter 31 Download PDF pp. 179-179 221:2–3 high brass, even from Kansas: as per the entry on 126:33, Kansas is a reference to eisenhower, who was reared in abilene, Kansas. 221:3–4 higher than osage-orange trees: The maclura pomifera is a small tree, which reaches nine to thirteen yards in height. See entry at 33:5... Chapter 32 Download PDF pp.

180-180 225:2 986342: These digits represent the location on a map reference grid that would provide the location of the object in question. Hemingway takes this exact sequence from the 18 november 1944 Unit Journal for the 22nd infantry Regiment, which would place them in Hürtgen Forest (Boice 67). 225:4, 5, 7, 10 S-6: an S6 is a military... Chapter 33 Download PDF pp. 181-183 226:2 sleepy: Following Cantwell’s nap, Renata speaks “sleepily” (224:7, 225:28), and is sleepy on 226:2, 226:19, which leads to her nap on 227:3 and her waking up and speaking on 229:26, and then going back to sleep on 229:32.

Cantwell admires the way she sleeps like a cat—“when it sleeps within itself” (226:19–20)—and then deeply... Chapter 34 Download PDF pp. 184-184 231:10 motoscafo: italian for “motorboat.” See also the beginning of chapter 39 (252:16), when Cantwell and Jackson actually do get on the boat. 231:13 will not ever see one another again: at this point, Cantwell is all but certain that he will not live long enough to see Renata again; this is the last time. Goodbye... Chapter 35 Download PDF pp. 185-186 233:1 The first day there: The first day in Hürtgen Forest for the 22nd infantry division would have been 16 november 1944. Similar to Cantwell’s declaration, three battalion commanders were “lost” (one killed and two wounded) on 17–18 november (22nd infantry Regiment Society). Regarding Cantwell’s later query about the... Chapter 36 Download PDF pp.

187-188 Just as Renata and Cantwell step into the refreshing “sharp, cold bright day” (237:1), the reader might at this point also welcome a breath of fresh Venetian air. The characters have been in Cantwell’s hotel room from page 193 to page 236, 43 pages and more than ten thousand words of almost total inaction beyond Cantwell recounting... Chapter 37 Download PDF pp. 189-191 240:5–6 the tide coming in at Mont St. Michel: Cantwell refers to mont-Saintmichel in lower normandy, an island noted for its volatile tides from the Cousenon River. 241:4 Ft. Riley: Fort Riley, a barracks in northern Kansas, was the training grounds for the 9th armored division, which would go on to fight, among other places, in... Chapter 38 Download PDF pp.

192-194 246:14 Farewell, a long farewell: Cantwell is referencing a speech by Cardinal wolsey in Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth: “Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!” (3.2.352). 247:4 and she had said to herself: Here is another brief glimpse into someone else’s consciousness; we gain access into Renata’s thoughts, coaxing herself to be strong... Chapter 39 Download PDF pp. 195-195 253:20 It’s easy if you’re bad: Here is the key to Cantwell’s attitude, and perhaps anyone’s: if you do not allow yourself to be affectionate or emotionally attached, goodbyes are easier. One can imagine how many friends Cantwell has had to say goodbye to in battle, and the hard shell of emotionlessness might be the only way to get... Chapter 40 Download PDF pp.

196-198 256:1 sunken oak hogshead: we are back on Sunday morning, in the “shooting barrel” (12:21), the “oaken staved hogshead sunk in the bottom of the lagoon” from chapter 1 (13:4–5). 256:2–4 A blind is any artifice . . . : an unusual moment of exposition in the narrative, in which the narrator is explaining something to the reader, rather than... Chapter 41 Download PDF pp. 199-202 265:2 made the miracle: This ambiguous reference picks up “it” (260:9–11) and “that thing” (262:19), which essentially depicts Cantwell meditating in the duck blind about his love for Renata and how it came about. “The great miracle” is nothing less than the mystery of love, as improbable as Cantwell and Renata’s relationship might... Chapter 42 Download PDF pp. 203-203 as he began drafting this chapter, Hemingway wrote “next to Last Chapter,” even though that claim would be incorrect.

272:3–4 they worked together in complete co-ordination: we see an unexpected harmony between these two adversaries, the sullen and the wrathful (see 184:24... Chapter 43 Download PDF pp. 204-204 275:15 The Barone killed forty-two: it might be expected that Hemingway would have made his alter ego the “top gun” (275:14), but in this sense, Across the River and into the Trees is consistent with Green Hills of Africa, when Hemingway is defeated in a hunting competition with Karl, a loss that leaves him, as he says, “cold in the pit... Chapter 44 Download PDF pp. 205-205 This penultimate chapter is slight, only 176 words. in the manuscript, Hemingway does not make a division between chapters 44 and 45, but calls 44 “Last Chapter” and 45 “Last Chapter—(continued).” Chapter 45 has 754 words.

278:1 a villa with great gates: Nanuk Franchetti had a villa in Treviso, north of Venice... Chapter 45 pp. 206-207 280:1 early darkness: Cantwell dies and the novel ends on Sunday evening, at dusk. 280:5 I ordered you: Cantwell explodes with his last burst of temper and then an immediate apology, followed by a justification. This tension that has dogged Cantwell throughout the novel, just as it has defined the narrative, continues to the... Appendix 1 'Across the River and Into the Trees' is Published | World History Project Sep 7 1950 'Across the River and Into the Trees' is Published Across the River and Into the Woods has a frame story of 50-year-old Colonel Cantwell duckhunting in Trieste. The first chapter is set in the present, then using the technique of stream of consciousness interior monologue, Hemingway presents an extended flashback that begins in the second chapter and continues through to Chapter 39. The final six chapters return to the present time.

Cantwell has heart disease and on the Sunday in the a duck blind in Trieste he remembers his final weekend in Venice with the 18-year-old Renata, as well as his war experiences. At the end of the novel, as he leaves the duck blind, Cantwell suffers a series of fatal heart attacks. Across the River and into the Trees : Ernest Hemingway : 9780099909606 Across the River and into the Trees Paperback US$7.09 US$15.50 You save US$8.41 Free delivery worldwide Add to basket Add to wishlist Description The War is just over. In Venice, a city elaborately and affectionately described, the American Colonel, Richard Cantrell, falls passionately in love with Renata, a young Italian countess who has 'a profile that could break your or anyone else's heart'. Cantrell is embittered, war-scarred and old enough to be Renata's father, but he is overwhelmed by the selflessness and freshness of the love she is offering. But this is no fairy tale. The fighting may be ended, but the wounds of war have not yet healed.

And for some, the longed-for peace has come too late. A lesser known classic by one of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Across the River And Into The Trees is still vintage Hemingway. show more Product details 110 x 174 x 18mm | 140.61g Publication date Classics Review quote "He can perform prodigies. He can fascinate us by pure evocation, by the tensity of the situation" Times Literary Supplement "The most important author since Shakespeare" New York Times "He can perform prodigies. He can fascinate us by pure evocation, by the tensity of the situation" Times Literary Supplement "The most important author since Shakespeare" The New York Times Book Review show more Review Text As Hemingway's first in ten years, this has a waiting and eager audience, but this reader, at any rate, found the novel a bitter disappointment after his For Whom The Bell Tolls The magic of the Hemingway atmosphere- this time Venice and the countryside and early morning in a duck blind - this is still here.

And stark against it is an American Colonel, seeking to recapture the glamor of the Venice he knew in World War I, torn by hatred and disillusion, aware that his life is ebbing fast, his semblance of physical fitness an illusion produced by drugs that fooled even the medical officer, and yet clutching at the drama of first one thing, then another - the adventure in the duck blind - the greater and more tenuous adventure of a love freely given. The pattern is there for another Farewell to Arms but the development has an acidity, a cruelty, a harshness that robs it of even a shadow of illusion or appeal on an emotional level. Frankly, I found it difficult reading. There's crassness, lack of subtlety, needless vulgarity in the content, while the style has the erratic abruptness, elisions, and awkwardness that characterizes Hemingway at his least successful..... The promotion will send this off with a bang; the serialization should not be a vital consideration, as the novel has been almost rewritten since that text. Extensive advertising.

(Kirkus Reviews) show more About Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield - this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war - in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961. show more Follow us

Question: Who wrote the novel ‘Across the River and Into the Trees’?
Answer: Ernest Hemingway